An important lesson on troubleshooting software applications

Written by: hexley on Sunday April 13th 2008, 7:03 PM

Filed under: Applications,Little Smokies,Misc

A few days ago, one of our readers sent in an email asking if I had any idea why Internet Explorer would not load web pages in his installation of Virtual PC. Every now and then I will take an interest in a users problems and see if I can not help them troubleshoot the issue.

We had a few rounds of email, over the course of a few days, in the end, I was unable to help. A solution was found, but not by myself, rather the user figured it out on their own. The solution was simple, and one I usually try as a first step, as should everyone. This time, it never crossed my mind, as I wrongfully assumed the user would also try this method as a first step.

The short story, his software was out of date, and simply needed to be updated. Never crossed my mind to even ask. Sometimes I get stuck in a troubleshooting bubble, this happened to be one of those times.

My first step was to have him try a hard coded DNS server. Second was to use OpenDNS servers. Third was to try to load websites by IP address, ruling out DNS issues entirely. Finally, we plugged his computer directly into the DSL modem, thereby ruling out any wireless or networking issues.

None of those methods worked. At the least, we narrowed it down to software issues, and not hardware or network related.

A few days later, I received an email from the reader telling me he got it working. A simple software update to Virtual PC and he was good to go.

If your software is not working as advertised. Look at their website, and see if they have an update that addresses your issues. I should express caution to the idea of running wild and updating all your software; often is the case a software update will fix one thing and break others.

Read the website, or email their support department, asking them about your specific issues. If all else fails, and you still can not get it working, update your software and see if that does the trick.

In the case above, the reader was using Virtual PC. I doubt any emails to Microsoft would have even been replied to, so his only chance was to run a software update. The good news is it worked, the bad news is we wasted three days because I did not think to ask if his software was up to date. The best news is the reader ended up working it out on his own, and learned something about the troubleshooting process along the way.